As a trainer of negotiation and conflict resolution skills, I love using optical illusions to demonstrate the fallibility of our perception. They alert us that our senses can be unreliable and susceptible to influence. And they remind us that it is always possible to see things differently. The ability to be alert to errors in thinking and judgment that any of us are prone to is of course essential to anyone who is negotiating or resolving a dispute.

The second is Shepard’s “Turning the Tables”, an interactive illusion with tables that appear to be of different dimensions but are in fact identical, with the ability to test the visual effect for yourself. It’s extraordinary how knowing the truth doesn’t necessarily prevent us from making mistakes in our thinking.

Gustave Flaubert once wisely observed, “There is no truth. There is only perception.”

Dispute resolution professionals know only too well how much perception contributes to conflict. We see what we want to see and tune out the rest, or become so focused that we lose sight of what lies in our peripheral vision. Our senses can mislead or fool us, while our assumptions lead us to see what was never there at all or blind us to what is right before our eyes.

One of my favorite studies, hands down, is this one described here in this article from the Daily Telegraph, which reveals just how much we utterly fail to see. Researchers showed subjects a video of two teams of people playing basketball, one in white shirts and the other in black, and instructed the subjects to count the number of times the team wearing white t-shirts bounces the ball. A person in a gorilla costume walks through the players, stops in front of the camera to thump its chest, and then walks off.

Incredibly, half of all subjects failed to see the gorilla, so intent were they on following the movement of the ball.

(Incidentally, I recently worked with a colleague who showed this video to a class she and I were teaching together. In a group of about 60 people, only 20 of them saw the gorilla. When we went back and replayed the video to prove to them that the gorilla in fact was there, no one could believe their eyes.)

To test your own powers of observation, visit this link for a whole range of video demonstrations. Or, to see the gorilla yourself, click here. (The gorilla video takes time to load, so you may not want to attempt this with a dial-up connection.)

As I have observed before—here and, more recently, here—optical illusions are of interest to mediators, particularly because of the way in which optical illusions, like mediation, challenge us to see things differently.

Optical illusions also pointedly remind us of the unreliability of our own senses and the degree to which human perception can be manipulated or altered.

Mediation can help individuals in conflict gain new perspective, bringing fresh insight and understanding of each other and the underlying conflict.

To enable disputants to see things differently, mediators utilize a technique called “reframing” to assist parties to redefine the way in which they understand or conceive of a problem. Bernie Mayer said it best: “The art of reframing is to maintain the conflict in all its richness but to help people look at it in a more open-minded and hopeful way.”

As it turns out, humans already possess a great capacity for seeing things in a more positive light. Those of you who are fascinated by the mysteries of human behavior will find much to ponder in two studies described in this article from the Wall Street Journal which xamined the human propensity to interpret negative outcomes in the most positive light possible.

Most of us would safely assume that we would recognize immediately when an outcome resulted which we did not intend, particularly when that outcome is not our desired one. But a study on decision-making, conducted by researchers at Lund University, challenged that assumption. Subjects were convinced that those less desirable outcomes were the ones they had actually intended, despite the evidence of their own senses.

In addition, research conducted by Professor David Gilbert of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University reveals that our brains “strive to provide the best view of things”. In tests performed using optical illusions in which an object can be perceived in any number of ways, when humans were rewarded for seeing one particular view of that object, they were no longer able to perceive the object’s other views. In other words, we are hard-wired to see things in the best and most rewarding light possible. For further details, read Professor Gilbert’s online article at Edge.org.

This ability to see the best view of events and objects obviously helps us as humans build resiliency and adapt to change, particularly when that change is difficult. It undoubtedly aids us when we are faced with conflict. Reframing comes naturally to us.

(This does raise some intriguing questions for mediation practice. Do we do good or harm when we assist parties in reframing their conflict? Should mediators be wary of exploiting the human susceptibility to see intention and choice in unintended outcomes, to see the positive in less than optimal results? Or does reframing innocuously and simply draw upon our natural propensity to seek the view that is most rewarding and ultimately lead people to optimal choices? And what do these studies suggest about choice and informed decision-making on the part of disputants at the table?)

As the saying goes, “assume” makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. And we make assumptions all the time—it’s how we’re hard-wired as human beings. (And it’s that very human tendency which keeps mediators busy.)

Unfortunately, of course, our assumptions can sometimes be wrong. They may be based on incomplete or inaccurate data. And we often fail to ask questions, believing that we have all the information we need to draw conclusions.

We also tend to trust our senses to gain information about our world, relying upon our sight and our hearing to gather data—data which in turn forms the basis for the inferences we draw about our interactions with each other.